Confiteor meaning

The next episode of the rite exactly reproduces the Roman confiteor as it stood in the 2nd century; "the postulant says: ' Parcite nobis.

After this the aria "Et in spiritum sanctum," in which the next dogmatic clauses are enshrined like relics in a casket, furnishes a beautiful decorative design on which the listener can repose his mind; and then comes the voluminous ecclesiastical fugue, Confiteor unum baptisma, leading, as through the door and world-wide spaces of the Catholic Church, to that veil which is not all darkness to the eye of faith.

confessio, from confiteor, acknowledge, confess), a term meaning in general the admission and acknowledgment that one has done something which otherwise might remain undisclosed, especially the acknowledgment of guilt or wrong-doing, either in public or to somebody specially entitled to such knowledge.